Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs)

TL;DR

CRDTs are data types designed for distributed systems that allow concurrent updates without conflicts, ensuring eventual consistency through mathematically sound rules for state convergence.

Contribution

This paper formally introduces CRDTs, defining their properties and demonstrating how they enable conflict-free, convergent replicated data management in distributed systems.

Findings

CRDTs guarantee eventual consistency without coordination.

They enable concurrent updates across distributed replicas.

Mathematically sound rules ensure deterministic state convergence.

Abstract

A conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT) is an abstract data type, with a well defined interface, designed to be replicated at multiple processes and exhibiting the following properties: (1) any replica can be modified without coordinating with another replicas; (2) when any two replicas have received the same set of updates, they reach the same state, deterministically, by adopting mathematically sound rules to guarantee state convergence.